Over the past year, we have highlighted a few of our Giving Back initiatives in this blog. This month we're very humbled to share an interview with ReloTrans President, Frank Peditto in the Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley newsletter, a group we've had the pleasure of working with over the past few years. As a small team in an incredible community this is one of the key highlights of working at ReloTrans.
Profile in Giving: A conversation with Frank Peditto
ReloTrans Staff: Brittany Cochran, Peggy Leary, Kim Poole, Lisa Graham, Amy Woundy
In last month's newsletter, we profiled ReloTrans, a local company whose owner and employees volunteer monthly at one of our Brown Bag Program sites. This month, we talk with the owner, Frank Peditto, and explore his decision to get involved with Elder Services.
How did you get started volunteering?
The catalyst for my volunteering was two very special people. My daughter is a speech and language pathologist. She was working with a young teenager who has autism, helping with his functional life skills, like using the telephone. So twice a week she would have him call me. It was an incredible, heartfelt feeling that something so simple could make such a huge impact on someone's life. On those afternoons, I really looked forward to his call.
How did you and your company, ReloTrans, get connected to our Elder Brown Bag Program?
From the experience with my daughter's client, I began to think about doing something my team at ReloTrans and I could do that would support our community and that we could feel good about doing. I spoke with my staff about this effort. I made sure they understood that whatever was decided, it was strictly a volunteer opportunity. That's when the idea for the ReloTrans Giving Back Program was created. That ended up being the easy part. The hard part was finding the right fit. I called a handful of non-profits in the area but they weren't interested in a long-term, team-type commitment. The assignments they wanted help with were one-time/one-day building projects or a collection drive-- really just "one and done" deals. My team and I were looking for something more permanent, something we could all do together on a schedule we could be depended on to follow.
That's when I mentioned something to my neighbor who works for Elder Services and we were finally connected to the Elder Brown Bag Program.
Besides you, who else at your company is involved?
We have a staff of 25 employees and each month five or six volunteer off the floor to help at the Horace Mann Silver Hill Charter School in Haverhill packing up 350 bags of groceries. Sometimes it can be a bit of a struggle, especially in summer which is our busiest season when staff is out, but the managers believe in the effort, step up and volunteer themselves because it helps with morale and it's a great team-building project. Sometimes even spouses have offered to help. We are very excited each month when we arrive in our t-shirts, wearing a smile, with muscles ready to fill the bags with food because we know we are making a positive impact in an elder's life.
How has this experience impacted you and your staff personally?
One of my favorite business quotes is from Virgin Airlines owner, Richard Branson. He said, "A business is simply an idea to make other people's lives better. If you can make peoples' lives better, you've got a really good business."
Branson is 100 percent right. My challenge as the company owner is keeping my employees engaged, offering incentives and showing appreciation for their effort because they are your most important asset. To this end, I wanted to create a win/win experience with our volunteering. For example, the staff who volunteer on Brown Bag Day, are given the rest of the day off.
What we do at Brown Bag is truly a team effort. We love to roll up our sleeves and dive right into the assembly line. There are volunteers from other places and the staff at Elder Services who help with this effort. We've all developed a wonderful comradery and we complement each other's strengths. All this adds up to being better people, a better company, a better community.
Recently we began delivering some of the bags to the Salisbury Council on Aging and interacting, in a small way, with the recipients of these bags. Reports tell us the bottom line of value would be about $6,665, if these were paid positions. However, there are no reports to describe the thankful and grateful looks of appreciation from these elders we deliver bags of food to - that bottom line is priceless!

Running a successful business is about more than the service we provide on a daily basis. While customer service and client satisfaction is paramount to our success, it’s also critical that we foster a culture of value and respect amongst our team members and within our local community. Our ReloTrans ‘Give Back’ program provides our team members with the opportunity to volunteer in local community based programs during work hours.
Recently, as part of the ‘Give Back’ program our team engaged with the Elder Services of Merrimack Valley (ESMV) organization. ESMV is a private non-profit agency serving elders and disabled adults who reside in Northeast Massachusetts. Established in 1974, ESMV’s mission is to support an individual’s desire to make their own decisions, secure their independence, and remain living in the community safely.
One of the many ESMV programs is the Elder Brown Bag Program. Partnering with the Greater Boston Food Bank, ESMV makes weekly deliveries of perishable and non-perishable food items to over 3,000 low-income elders in need in 23 cities and towns. ESMV staff, along with individual and corporate volunteers like those from our ReloTrans team, coordinates the packing and delivery of the food items, which is no small task.
ReloTrans team members volunteer at ESMV’s Brown Bag Program site at the Silver Hill Horace Mann Charter School in Haverhill. This is actually ESMV’s second Brown Bag Program site in Haverhill and it was opened in December 2014 because the first site had reached its maximum capacity of 750 bags. Currently the Silver Hill site packs and distributes 320 bags each month and ESMV is actively accepting new applications so this number is expected to grow.
This initiative has truly been a win-win for our team and for the ESMV organization. ESMV receives the extra hands they need to coordinate and facilitate this incredibly valuable community program and ReloTrans team members get the personal satisfaction of helping serve the local community during a few hours out of the office.
Many businesses shy away from offering a community based volunteer program as part of their employee benefits because of logistics and management, but the value far outweighs the risks. Keep it simple and find the right community partners and the team will do the rest. And, you will be rewarded both as a business owner/manager and human being.
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About the author

As the President of ReloTrans, Frank Peditto is responsible for the vision and growth strategy of the company as well as overall leadership. A veteran of the transportation and logistics fields, Frank possesses more than eighteen years of leadership and thirty years of customer service experience.